Does Mariah Carey Take Songwriting Seriously? [Video]
As a companion to our glossary of Mariah Carey's 10-cent words, here's a supercut of her talking about her songwriting throughout her 22-year career. Just as she keeps coming back to a heartbreaker, this is something she does incessantly.
I'm of a few minds about this. It was always a talking point so much so early on that it almost reads as suspicious (she really, really wanted you to know that sh! e wrote all of the songs on her debut album). Her expressed frustration at people not realizing that she's more than someone who just stands there and sings is perhaps paranoid (with the clips we collected, this could have been twice as long). But it also is perhaps endemic of the low expectations we have for our pop divas an undoubted partial product of sexism.
Do people still not get that Mariah Carey writes her own songs? Maybe. But in the time since her 1990 debut, the notion of a singer-songwriter has expanded way beyond the former perception of a white person holding an instrument (a la Bob Dylan, Carole King, Tori Amos, etc.). Pop and R&B stars like Ne-Yo, Keri Hilson and The-Dream have devised such hits that they are recognized as often for their songwriting as their performing. Maybe Mariah's tireless efforts for recognition have helped open that door. Maybe she's just a self-invested diva. Probably, the answer is somewhere between the two.
Related: Acquiescent Nothingness Incessantly: A Glossary of Mariah Carey's 10-Cent Words
[The creation of this video would have not been possible without the help of Maeve Keirans and my supercut apprentice Prachi Gupta.]
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